http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ We open today with a trip to the heavens, courtesy of Microsoft. This is by no means the only universe explorer on the web - we've shown lots of these in Webscape over the years - but I love the way this application works and there are some really nice guided tours as well. You'll need to download the 20mb application to start and then launch the telescope package from your desktop. This interactive application puts a planetarium on your home PC, with a telescope you control as you zoom around the skies exploring famous landmarks such as the Eagle Nebula (collections/chandra telescope), the Antenna Galaxies (collections/hubble images), and a little closer to home Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (collections/solar system). Use the thumbnails across the top to move between collections. Clicking a thumbnail will make your personal telescope zoom through the skies to reach its destination. You can control the image further using the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out, while double clicking a location moves that to the centre of your screen. Go into the View menu and you can change the location of the telescope you're viewing the sky from, and even set the date in the past or the future! There's lots more you can do to customize your viewing experience but I'll let you discover that on your own. When you're done exploring you can sit back and take a guided tour, accessed through the menu at the top. Some are better than others, with music and voice rather than just text, and some are very complicated. But the content is generally fascinating and will cater to astronomy fans of all ages. It's a big big Universe out there - be careful you don't get lost.
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